Valve has once again arbitrarily ousted a game from its store, forcibly expunging visual novel “The Key to Home” from the Steam Store whilst claiming the game’s main demographic are “pedophiles.”

Henteko Doujin, the game’s developer, reportedly received an email from Valve demanding details regarding the game’s plot and intended audience; after receiving Henteko Doujin’s response, Valve sent an additional email stating “We are not interested in shipping this title on Steam” – which drew criticism as the visual novel possesses no actual H-scenes with its child characters.

The Key to Home’s Steam store page also had no suggestive images or videos and yet the game was seemingly removed solely for having child characters; Henteko Doujin naturally sent Valve another message asking why the game was removed, to which they responded “because we think this novel’s core audience is pedophiles.”

A PV for “The Key to Home”, which has been bombarded with dislikes:

Henteko Doujin subsequently posted on the Steam community forums to explain the situation, claiming that the visual novel’s main premise is the exact opposite of Valve’s presumption and that it has no sexually explicit content whatsoever:

This novel game is aimed to raise social awareness of child and school related social issues through a story about four troubled heroines who, under unexpected circumstances, join forces with a young hapless teacher to fight against an evil organization that means to exploit children.

This work is fiction, but linked with real problems regarding children in the real world. Another theme of this work is fighting against real life evils through the use of fictional “Hentai”.

Some of the complaints made via the Steam community forums are due to the game’s artist MUK who has been known for drawing rather risque erotica, though Henteko Doujin stated that his participation in the game’s creation had an “important meaning” and could only be understood by playing it.

Other internet dwellers have also been quite fixated by a quote on The Key to Home’s store page: “This is a visual mystery novel for all gentlemen and gentlewoman who love little girls!” – a mistranslation of a Japanese slang expression:

“This is a visual mystery novel for all gentlemen and gentlewoman who love little girls!” Has caused many more information: after reading the steam discussion page, it has become clear that many people’s interpretation of the phrase: Some confusion.

In this context, the word ‘Gentleman’ or ‘gentleman’ is a Japanese internet meme which is used when referring to people who like children in a normal and clearly non sexual way.

I apologize for having included this phrase before making sure that its true meaning was as clear as possible.”

This however did not stop Steams truculent masses from brigading the game:

This is what is wrong with society today. Anyone that even remotely steps outside the box that is “mainstream” anything is immediately labeled and attacked. It doesn’t matter if it’s sports, games, politics, or pizza toppings anymore.

The way things are going, we’re going to end up with a large underclass of people who won’t be able to get jobs or have lives simply because they said or did something once upon a time that wasn’t 100% PC.

Seriously, you have people saying the artists should basically never get safe-for-work work because of his other work. They’re basically saying “how dare you try to reform?! DIE!”

This is the problem with summarizing games for review purposes. Valve should have had someone actually play the game (or at least a demo version of it) before banning it out right.
Lest we forget games like Manhunt and other such murder simulators that can still be found on Steam.
That’s the way it has become in the US. Violence is okay, no matter how realistic and disturbing it may be, but imply any “sexual” content (whether it exists or not) results in an automatic ban. Which is sad given the fact that there are lawmakers out there wanting to LEGALIZE pedophilia in the real world. Even if this was an ero game, isn’t it better for fake children to be exploited than real ones?
Welcome to America people. The stronghold for hipocrites and other…people to police the world and block anything that doesn’t fit their agenda.

I say ban everything. Ban anything that could be used as a weapon. Ban anything that could be bad for your physiological health. Ban anything that could be bad for your mental health. Ban anything that could be bad for intellectual growth. Ban anything that could offend anyone. Humanity is so fragile we just need to ban EVERYTHING for our own good.

Oh good. What’s next? We put rainbows and lolipops on all the games just to make sure no one is offended? Are we xenophobic by playing Mass Effect? We gonna be gangsters for GTA? Are we terrorists for playing MGS – this game has some strong conspiracy theory levels mind you.

Steam should sell games. Filter those fraudulent asset flippers and cater to all gamers equally. I had hopes for this platform but forget it. It’ll be fed to the dogs at this rate.

Bet Woody Allen and Roman Polanskiget to have exemptions because it would be “counter semantic” to label them as anything less than saints for the “crimes” that Gentiles can be labeled as “monsters” for committing. They’ve RAPED ACTUAL REAL CHILDREN, and are still skulking around the free world scott free on the account of their funny skullcaps and mutilated penises, aren’t they?

Why don’t we ban the very existence of children while we’re at it? Children cater to pedophiles, therefore no children = no pedos, problem solved! And we’ll no longer have to worry about overpopulation, that’s killing two birds with one stone 🙂

I really wish people would learn the diffrence between cartoon art and real life. Its a anime girl, she is not real, Mind you I never even knew this game existed until now, but yeah… People need to really learn to tell the diffrence between real life and make believe.

Wow valve actually got off there asses and cleaned out a shit game from their library for once? Are they finally going to stop allowing broken games that cant even run into there store page? Oh wait they banned a perfectly good game for no reason. Well back to valve being shit I guess.

There’s many franchises involving female characters that “appear underage/mature” but are given ridiculous “ages” to evade negative responses from overly strict regulations. It’s especially commonly in animation involving sexuality with “mythical” female characters. The same applied for particular human characters from the Dead or Alive video game series but that’s another topic.

Despite that, although I could understand the initial reactions, I however believe that any games across the platform with similar content could be challenged with the same mentality. A narrative must have context and this one avoided being subtle which lead to its immediate halt.

I’m unsure what depth the game’s content has but it’ll require a detailed analysis and possible alterations if it attempts redistribution to avoid this situation again.

Most otomes games ( pretty much all ) have a stupid/useless heroine being insult/humiliated non stop by all their prince-like hypocritical heros BUT feminists doesn’t care about it even worst they love it.

Well that’s your usual pathetic nolife geek community who can’t stop insulting and trashing everything related to our otaku community because they have to make sure they are superior to someone else. Nothing new , been seeing this since decades

steam should stop hiring feminists who are so ugly and interesting Irl that they can’t stop complaining about VIRTUAL-NON EXISTENT-2D moe characters, seeing rape everywhere such a pitiful and poor life.
Meanwhile real pedophile who have nothing to do with our otaku community are being forgotten and continue their “legal” real rape ( feminist never speak about them so compare to us it’s seem to be better ? of course :p )
Jealousy make stupid people blind

One of his accusers stated that he assaulted her when she was *thirteen*
And yet he still got to wear the tyrant’s crown and sit on the despot’s thorne.
While enjoying chaste and BARELY erotic visual-novels drawn in Manga Style gets one smeared as a deviant and a monster.

You better believe they are not going to fix shovelware. After all those little kids are buying them in droves. Same for that loot box crap which is catered to you kids who have no compulsion control. All legal and violence of course that even more legal.

Stupid people and stupid logic. Because by that statement they should also remove Valkyrie Chronicles because of Raita and anyone who watches Powerpuff Girls including their creators and anyone related are pedophiles because cartoon little girls.

You are the one who are not reading properly you filthy piece of shit. The only thing I see here are stupid accusations by idiots like yourself. Go read the article all over again because it seems like that you are the one that is blind here.

If you want to call people stupid, have a go at the publisher. They were ASKED what the game was about and they FAILED to inform Valve that it wasn NOT a pedo title. They are just as much to blame as Valve. Valve merely went by what THE PUBLISHER told them.

So should we ban shooters next? There is concrete evidence(according to this issue’s logic) that playing such a game would entail shootings and seeing as there have been shootings, it’s an imperative to remove them forthwith.

Nothing wrong with people having a fetish. There are people who get off on the thought of cutting someone’s limbs off to restrain them. Very creepy if you ask me, but so long they stick to hentai/fantasy, who cares?

Gender is a social construct but it is firmly linked to biology. The issue isn’t whether it is a social construct or not but how much influence biology has on it. What makes matters worse is there are people out there that want to ignore reality and totally disregard the biological link.

How nice that there is the anime Hakumei to Mikochi who have the possibility of preserving the same charisma, cuteness, innocence and the feeling of warming the heart that normally animes with children has. Now I understand why the design of the anime next season has changed so much.

Can’t blame them I knew since the game was announced that it was eventually getting pulled.
Japan is a lot more open minded when it comes to fiction but in the west mixing children and sexual themes in any way is the biggest red flag you can rise.

The game rated all ages but got deleted and banned. But games with violent that you could even called them as “killing simulator” are fine and not to mention about all the lootbox gambling games like CS:GO and the like.

This is say a lot about Valve. I wonder who exactly sent e-mails responsed to the dev. If we know the background of the person maybe this is just another SJW at works again.

Given what we see in American politics, it’s very likely the person responsible for banning this title is themselves a pedophile trying to hide that fact from others. After all, those who publicly lambaste against a given subject are the most most likely of being guilty of indulging in said same subject.

It would also certainly explain Nintendo of America during the Wii U years…

Yeah and the whole damn globe buys the violence that the U.S. exports in it’s media that only the U.S. so loves. I love how so many people of my generation fail to see what is going on around them and loves to play moral superiority to make themselves feel good.

I love how the people criticising the developer for “supporting” the artist (who has apparently drawn lolicon before) fail to realise that this is more common than they seem to realise. A lot of Japanese artists start out with erotic works.

Good example being the artist on Xenoblade Chronicles 2. He has supposedly dabbled in hentai doujins in the past, yet Nintendo was perfectly fine in letting him take part in the game’s development.

But no. Better to just stay ignorant to how the industry works and try and try and play armchair developer and tell people what to do, even though the work in question is not even related to what you’re getting angry over. Clearly.

To this people it’s the “principle of the matter”. That if anything seems remotely pedophilia it, it’s a endangerment to children; and there for should be removed. Logically, it’s about as sound as taking a shit in someone else’s home and not flushing.

Well, they can’t even tell the different between reality and fiction. So I don’t expect them to understand anything about how things in the real world works.

Most of the talented artist who can draw really well are the ones that have experience in drawing erotic before. I would not surprise if 100% of the very good at drawing and super good at proportion used to work on ero-manga or something before.

Even if it was for pedophiles, its debatable, but let’s say it acutally its for pedophiles…where is the problem? Isn’t better for them to expend their time playing this game where no one gets hurt than watching actual CP where there was a victim or stalking some IRL kids?

Apparently, most people think that if you were born pedophilic, you’re a piece of shit and you should die, even if you’re an outstanding citizen and would never, ever do a crime against children in real life.

Also if you a pedophile and raped many kids. It’s all fine and no police gonna catch you if you are in religion and a person like a Bishop or a Pope said it’s okay. That’s real thing happened in today world.

Valve’s image and public perception is worth way way more than whatever extra cash this ultra niche game could’ve made them. This would’ve been peanuts compared to the big picture. Steam is a privately owned store and has the right to decide what goes and what doesn’t. And that’s capitalism for ya.

Yeah, it actually reduces crime if they have an outlet that isn’t illegal to pursue with which they can relieve their pent up stress due to being unable to have sex with what they’re attracted to since birth. Sexcrime rates are going down everywhere where people have access to erotica. Go figure.

” Isn’t better for them to expend their time playing this game where no one gets hurt than watching actual CP where there was a victim or stalking some IRL kids?”

Maybe maybe not. The point being that as a corporate entity Steam or Valve as a whole do not really want to be all up in that can of worms that may or may not be misunderstood by the general public.
So if anything they just do not want to be the ones to say or do anything of that sort cause of all the potential PR nightmare it could become.

Steam isn’t a platform for one vocal minority, it’s a platform for games. Keyword: games. Valve should know first and foremost that games are just that and there’s nothing beyond the game that they sell. This sets precedent and there will be people who’ll take this act as an opportunity to profit from the losses steam commits if they keep on this path of pandering to the minority instead of the demographic they aim to cater to.

PEDOPHILIA. DOES. NOT. WORK. LIKE. THAT.
If someone can’t find an alternative to let the steam out, or if they are not even coming to terms with the fact they are pedos, it will surface one day in the worst possible way (raping an actual child) just cause they didn’t learn how to control it.

Try reading a fucking history book. The reason why gangs and street violence exists still today is that there was a suppression of what the people want way back in the past. It’s liquor then, drugs now. As far as violent eroge otakus go, there’s no rampant reports of players enacting their game experience/role in real life so you, sir, without giving us any proof of a counter argument other than demanding actual experiences, proves nothing.

Bad premise first of all and second then we need to also do the same for just about every game. Just imagine all those violent games of killing poeple or animals or just about anything. Don’t want killers and sociopath to get the rong idea. Maybe they just need to add a cross with a dead guy on it that way it be ok. After all pedophilia within religion is just fine.

If a child molester goes out to put his fantasies to reality, then he’s deemed to do it sooner or later nonetheless, no matter what he has read/watched. The blame is to be put entirely on him and not on anything outside him.

Otherwise it’s like saying girls should not go out wearing sexy clothes because I might want to rape them. Who’s to blame, me or them?

11:36 your reading comprehension is lacking. The argument was that if it is someone who would do that, they would do it anyway, not that everyone would eventually do that. Similar to how you can’t say a violent video game turns people into murderers just because one of the players decided to make their weird ideas real

11:36, by that logic someone might discover that he enjoys murdering people, by watching a movie or playing a game. And then he will go out in the streets and try to imitate what he saw. And thus we must ban all video/movie that depict process of murdering someone. Or you limit your logic only to pedophilia?

Well, girls wearing sexy clothing is a multi-level problem. Parents should have some responsibility for stopping them, and honestly the reason in majority of cases is they want to feel like adults. The problem is they misconstrue showing skin as being adult like some of their role models display. I can’t blame media for that though, because if it’s explained clearly, they wouldn’t do it. Ironically educating girls on fashion that makes them pretty without showing skin is something that would solve that issue, because the same shapes on clothing that make an adult woman attractive exist in a lot of the outfits middle schoolers wear now, and sadly the male mind doesn’t differentiate by age, it goes by hip-to-chest ratios, and those aren’t much different at that age.

Enough exposure to that and the male mind eventually just doesn’t care. I’ve had to stop stressing over looking when a nice set of hips catches my eye because I was stressing out about ‘oh god, did I look at a whatever?’ and now I just realize it’s the shapes, and look. Stress gone. I have no clue how old they are and it’s irrelevant if it’s attractive. It doesn’t mean that I’m going after every girl that catches my eye, it’s just a subconscious glance, and guilt at something so trivial and trying to make it mean something about me is a waste of mental resources. If it really comes down to it, if I ask a woman on a date who looks THAT young, I’ll order her a drink and she’ll have to show ID at some point. If she can’t, problem solved and she can take an uber home.

Them, of course!
Humans are animals and savor the taste of young fresh “flesh”, so wearing sexy clothes is simply a means to increase the “appetite” and be “devoured”.
Pull out the Hijabs, girls, hide your naked skin!

Someone might discover that he’s a molester upon encountering something that awakens that part of him and your argument that he’d do it sooner or later nonetheless is basically saying that there is no such thing as a closet pedo. It could be argued that such games encourage closed pedos to act.

I kinda agree I find it amusing how something mostly innocent like this game gets remove, yet hyper violent games like csgo and such stay, no wonder the usa has such a violence problem. Detailed gore is allowed but show a tit in a game and everyone freaks out. its Kinda a fucked up standart imo.

Valve didn’t care before a critical mass of people started to pay attention to it. It’s all about avoiding negative publicity. After all, Valve had initially accepted the project and it had remained there, until it started to gain infamy.

No idea why this garbage got upvoted but there is no logic to your comment whatsoever. “They are against pedophilia. That makes them pedophiles!” Dumbest pseudo-logic ever.

Fact is: Most pedohpiles try to mask their pedophilia by claiming they only like “teens”, natural girls”, or “art”.
There is nothing wrong with trying to clamp down on them, even if one or two legitimate ones are caught in the crossfire. Better safe than sorry.

Fact is, stuff like that IS ‘art’. Literally… drawings.. or digital creation…
I always have to chuckle when I see stories like this of people losing their minds “pedophiles!!!” they exclaim, while referencing a drawing…

While you constantly have television shows or movies depict rape, murder, and everything else under the sun. All using REAL people to do so.

Somehow that’s ok, that’s ‘art’.
But when it’s a drawing it’s not ok?, it’s not ‘art’?

Guy is hardcore voting you down for calling him out. Dude’s a closet pedo, fucked up in the head, I’ll not let my sister near him even if he was a celebrity. Should track your ip down to get a good look at your hard drive with a swat team. Might reveal who’s behind that mask.

The fact that you got offended and mad enough to hella downvote the guy with any pedi supporter backing you says enough. He said something against pedos and he get downvoted while you get upvoted, says enough pedo.

But that is pretty much like any real life school/kindergarten teacher. Why else would you become one? And please don’t say that they enjoy teaching dumb kids to do things. Yeah, right. I can understand the enjoyment of teaching in a university setting, where most of your audience is actually paying attention to what you say, but school/kindergarten is definitely not such place.

Exactly, these fuckers jerk to loli yet they claim not to be pedos. Talk a good tough talk behind a screen, acting all offended and shit but once we see them when they leave their houses, ooo wee quieter than a fuckng mouse. Bragging about how much balls they have but that shit shrink to the sizes of an ant the moment a cop is nearby.

Pretty much that alone kills off lolicon arguments. In our country it’s about appearance despite the age. The developer behind this just doesn’t know how cancerous our country is. Even if he made Adult girls Americans will still bitch and moan about it.

I know Devs would love to make game sales on a popular site like steam, but that site has become toxic towards sexually themed games even heavily fanserviced ones. The steam community has the shittiest people there I’ve seen a few online games get shut down within 2 years b/c of whiny assholes.

I get your meaning but here is the deal. Companies are free to do what ever they want. This is the problem of so many people using Steam. Maybe they can put it on COG and would have less issues. If this is bad imagine when the they finally kill Net Neutrality. Talking about a country going to shit.

Companies are not free to do whatever they want. They have to follow regulations and fulfill the contracts they sign. This could perfectly be an unlawful breach of contract and in that cae, Valve should pay.

Except the visual novel clearly has traits of pedophilia in it. According to the comments shown above, the teacher (Player) has a lolita complex and even puts cameras in the bathrooms to spy on his 10 year old students. Its not help by the fact the artist is known for drawing pedophilic hentai. Oh and lets not forget they advertised it as “a visual mystery novel for all gentlemen and gentlewoman who love little girls!”.

I love it when idiots complain about things they neither understand nor even bother to read about, just because they shut their brains down due to encountering something they don’t like. Thank God lolis are legal in Germany, Italy, Japan, the USA and a few other non-retarded countries.

Don’t waste your time making that comparison it’s been used many times. Violence isn’t taboo content compared to underage children. No it’s not ok accept violence, but if you think about it.. about 99.8% of our games revolve around some form of violence even if it’s not gorey

If people is mad that this game was banned, and the game have sex and it have little kids involve in that shit, it says enough. Anything you try to say will be used against you, I suggest hiding your IP address next time and not say so much next time.

When you look at them side by side its distinguishable. MUK tends to draw kind of egg shaped heads or very wide faces for a lack of a better word. Faces are different, for example eyes are more apart from each other. Also Murata is more detailed in general and a little less abstract with his proportions. The most distinguishable feature would propably be background art if you compare them its easy to see the difference in style.

I get the arguments presented by Henteko, but ultimately Valve is a retailer and has final choice on what can and cannot be sold on Steam. Hopefully, Henteko can find another distribution service that will host them.

Everyone here in the US has been hit with sexual harassment allegations lately. Our ‘sexual puritans’ (who are politically to the left these days, with a few exceptions) will burn you at the stake for even giving a woman the smallest of glances.

US culture has become pedantic in the extreme. Even ‘deliverance’ types weren’t this bad.

It’s what happens when your country is founded by religious fanatics. Pilgrims left England because they were persecuted for not being Church of England members.
They came to North America, slaughtered native Americans, stole their land. Then in turn they persecuted other religious groups that came after
including Catholics, Jews or and don’t forget they burned suspected witches at the stake.
Anal compulsive maniacs.

The religion of love also got catch raped children so many times, not just raping but also infecting them with the HIV virus. Which could kill them and of course the Pope decided to do nothing about it and blame its kids fault.

Everything, except for the wealthy and powerful men in all the different spheres of power who regularly traffic young children from third world countries into their privately owned country estates. Those specific Americans are perfect angels who do no wrong, as evidenced by the fact that they are wealthy and powerful.

Maybe some of the pizzagate people did not like how this game hit the nail on the head and wanted it shut down.

Everything related to females is subject to sexuality in their deprived minds, take a look at how PUBG devs quickly pussied out when a feminist cunt noticed the bulge cameltoe on the female model, while the male bulge is still untouched…

Monobeno is pretty tame compared with CS:GO. That thing is literally an online casino. You need to be 21 to gambling in a casino but anyone can gambling on CS:GO. Which is much worst and Valve is fine with it because money.

I’m gonna have to side with Steam on this one. I’ll defend this game’s right to exist, but like hell I’m going to fault Steam for not wanting to host or sell a game CLEARLY meant for the lolicon audience.

tfw once you become known for drawing porn you can never work normal jobs anymore. much like being known as a porn star working normal job after (which isn’t entirely true as there are some successful porn stars outside of porn…)

Man yall dumb as hell and need to actually get out and meet people outside of your dumb ass ill echo chambers or whatever. Cause honestly how can you all not see how most people in the mainstream would not think that just by looking at some of the images from the thing that the thing has something to do with sexualizeing children? Like god damn how far removed from everything are yall that you all can not really see something as simple as this?

Like really the only way this makes any sense to me is that you all are just after some sort of recreational outrage since the reasoning for any of this happening should be easy as ll fuck to understand.

See, we actually meet people outside because, you know, some of us needs money to buy games through work dumbass. Nice of you to assume everyone is a basement dweller because they’re outraged by this.

Your argument is that this game has sexy looking 2D children – fictional children. You claim that the “people in the mainstream” would look at it and think it’s for pedos but that’s just it, they LOOKED and then judged it outright.

If there are reports that this game directly induces the player to commit crimes against children then you may have a point but as it stands, it does not. That should be the criteria for a work of fiction to be judged and not much else. Simple to understand, right? I’m not misspelling anything for you?

You know what’s funny smartypants? Those who shouts diversity and change is becoming what they chant against: an authoritarian dictatorship where they ban anything THEY THINK is bad and refuse anything that doesn’t accommodate to their standards. Here’s the kicker too: those standards aren’t usually backed up by facts but what they feel, same how Trump blazed through the Republican party’s campaign against him. Take that with you when you go back to the ‘hood because you sound like one from there.

Valve don’t just ban games willy-nilly you fucking retards. They want to make as much money as possible. Banning games does not make them as much money as possible. Ergo, they won’t just ban a game unless they think they absolutely have to.

So why did they ban it?
Because that failure of a publisher gave them a reply that made them think the game would cater to pedophiles.
That’s on the publisher. Why?
Because Valve can only do so much with the information they have been given.

Imagine asking what the game is about and you are given that retarded “gentlemen” quote.
Literally everybody would think it’s a game for pedophiles, and if you disagree, you are a fucking liar (and you know it).

Valve would sell you literal shit if they could, but when it comes to alleged pedophilia, they have to be careful as all fuck. Because of their reputation and the law.

They think that character design such as the features on the faces, the shape of the arms, the legs, the eyes, the excessive detailing, even without having anything provocative or sensual suggests to be something related to pedophilia. Something like being a thief, thug or rogue for being black, wearing suggestive clothes and listening to hip hop. Actually the people have a very sharp view to judge the work or the people according to the appearances or that is in the surface.

If the police are rounding up folks and you have a baggie of weed in your pocket it’s best to look straight ahead and not get involved. I don’t care either way what they do on their store. Was surprised they ever allowed visual novels on it to be honest.